1. Group K1: Bertrand Wang, Matthew Bajorek, Jay Shah, Pritish Sahoo, Luis Sanchez,
Paul Pepkowski, Jedidiah Poppone, William Chernik
Advisor: Doyle Knight
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey
Results
Conclusion
Acknowledgements & References
Method
We would like to thank Dr. Doyle Knight and David Cunningham for their leadership
throughout the project. Also Linda Kurth for guiding us through deadlines.
References:
[1] http://thehuwaldtfamily.org/jtrl/vehicle_data/X-Vehicles/X-20/X-
20%20Landing%20Rendering.jpg
[2] Space Shuttle, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle
[3] http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/Images/ldrat.gif
[4] Schlieren, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieren
Motivation
• Re-entry space shuttles re-enter the atmosphere at around Mach
25, about 18,000 mph and needs to slow down to about 200 mph
for proper landing. [2]
• Conventional model design required a lot of machining and welding.
• Rapid prototyping can reduce the time and skilled labor required to
design and produce models suitable for supersonic testing.
• Key design is to optimize the coefficient of lift to the coefficient of
drag ratio at a fixed angle of attack to be able to glide at the proper
slope.
Current re-entry shuttles take a lot of time, money, and
man power to design. We wanted to demonstrate the
possibility to design re-entry shuttles quick, safe,
accurate, and cheaply through computerized
optimization and rapid prototyping of scale models.
Re-entry Space Capsule
NASA Lift to Drag Ratio diagram [3]
• X-20 Dyna-Soar was a U.S. Air Force project from 1957-1963.
• Designed for military missions at orbital altitudes.
• Design was chosen because of dimensions were available and
facilitated rapid prototyping.
Testing apparati:
• Tests were performed in both the subsonic and supersonic wind tunnels
• Subsonic wind tunnel were run at speeds between 0-120 mph.
• An adjustable sting balance measured lift and drag forces.
• Supersonic wind tunnel tests were run at pressures between 100-140 psi.
• Shock waves were visualized with schlieren imaging.
• Schlieren imaging allows for visualization of super sonic flow by taking
advantage of the compressibility of air. Because the density changes, different
densities refract light differently. [4]
• Compression regions refract more getting blocked by the razor and appear
darker. Expansion regions refract less and appear brighter.
Design:
• Sting, shuttle, and blank were designed in Solidworks 2010
• Sting and blank were machined out of aluminum
• Cowling was 3D printed by a Makerbot Replicator printer
• Shuttle was 3D printed by Formlabs printer
• Startup and shut down processes create the most turbulence and vibrations on the
model. 3D printed wing tips need to be reinforced to prevent breakage.
• modeFrontier will continue to be used to optimize wing geometry
• Cheapness was achieved by only spending $150 of our budget
• In future research we will adjust the angle of attack of the sting in the subsonic and
supersonic wind tunnels to get a better representation of reentry.
Sting Design
Introduction
Shuttle Design
CFD/modeFrontier :
• Shuttle design was imported into ANSYS workbench and was analyzed with
FLUENT at Mach 3.45
• The wing design was also optimized via modeFrontier, a program, that
automates the geometry creation and CFD analysis for many iterations
The high resolution of the
images show the
imperfections of the 3D print
surface. Wing tips also create
high compression regions as
seen by the dark areas.
X-20 Landing Rendering [1]
Blank Design Fluent results of the velocity flow at Mach 3.45
Subsonic wind tunnel set up Supersonic wind tunnel set up
Schlieren imaging at Mach 3.45 of composite shuttlemodeFrontier Workflow
Orange flow shows Mach 3.45 air flowing over the shuttle. The drag force was
predicted by FLUENT to be 10.682 N for a 373.59 mm2 cross sectional area, determined
by Solidworks. This correlates to a coefficient of drag of 0.1630 at zero angle of attack.
First model was fully 3D
printed and had the wings
broken off at Mach 3.45
during the shut down. To fix
this issue, we designed a
composite shuttle with
stainless steel wings while
keeping a 3D printed body.